Caveman

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For other uses, see Caveman (disambiguation).

A typical depiction of a caveman, as seen in a Minute Maid advertisement.

A caveman is a popular stylized characterization of how early humans or hominids may have looked and behaved. The term is sometimes used colloquially to refer to Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon, or Homo sapiens of the Paleolithic era.

The term has been discouraged for its inaccuracy, as it mostly refers to misconceptions of early humans. In the past, many people shared the view of the 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes that the life of a human being without civilization was "...solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short". The modern scientific perception of prehistoric lifestyle is now that of the hunter-gatherer.

Cavemen are usually portrayed as being hairy, clothed in animal skins, armed with bone or wood clubs, unintelligent, and aggressive. Stereotypical depictions of cavemen tend to show them using clubs to knock out potential mates, then carrying or dragging her by the hair to his cave. They are often shown as living contemporaneously with dinosaurs, a situation totally contradicted by archaeological and paleontological evidence which shows that dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago, at which time the only mammals were small, furry, and four-footed. Furthermore, cavemen are often shown as living in caves; but this stemmed from the ritual paintings found in caves: it is more probable that the caves were religious gathering places and not the actual dwellings of the supposed 'cavemen'.

The comic strips B.C. and Alley Oop and the 1960s American animated television series The Flintstones portray cavemen. Cavemen are also often seen in advertising, including advertisements for Minute Maid. More recently, GEICO has launched a series of television commercials & attempts at viral marketing where GEICO announcers are repeatedly denounced by modern cavemen for perpetrating a stereotype of unintelligent, backward cavemen.